Why Content Goes Viral: the Theory and&nbspProof

The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.

Not all great content goes viral, but (with the exception of awesomely terrible videos) content that does go viral is great. No one can guarantee that any piece of content will take the web by storm, but we can make sure that a piece of content has what it takes.

Long-time citizens of the web can often tell from a first-reading or viewing that a piece is going to explode, but why? Opinions about what it takes to be viral are easy to come by, but let’s look at the facts with data to prove it.

Write long, in-depth posts

In a scientific, statistical look at what makes content most shareable online, two University of Pennsylvania professors looked at the New York Times’ most emailed list to see if they could determine what cause people to share article. You can download the entire PDF here.

The first finding is that longer articles tend to be shared far more often. The correlation remains strong even after taking the amount of site exposure into account. In fact, sheer word count was more closely correlated with sharing than any other variable examined. John Doherty found a similar correlation this past October, finding that long posts receive more than their fair share of links.

Correlation isn’t causation (sorry, the phrase is cliché for a reason), and it’s possible that there’s something else at work here. Perhaps the journalists tend to write longer pieces when they’re writing on hot topics, for example.

A causal relationship makes sense, though. I’m far more likely to email or tweet something from #longreads or /r/DepthHub than a 200-word summary on the same topic. Long posts have the potential to be immersive and thorough in a way that’s impossible for short pieces. If I care about the topic at all, I don’t want to share an article with friends or readers if it just skims over the surface. If you want your word to spread, cover the topic fully.

Long posts aren’t all flowers and sunshine though. While long posts appear more likely to be shared through email and links, a separate study on blog comments found that users are less likely to comment on long posts.

Inspire anger, awe, or anxiety

You won’t be surprised to learn that posts that spend a lot of time on the home page are more likely to go viral, but after adjusting for variables the study does a pretty good job of showing which emotions make a post more viral:

Content that inspires low-energy emotions like sadness is less likely to be shared, where content that inspires high-energy emotions like awe, anger, and anxiety is far more likely to be shared.

Anger wins the award as the most viral emotion studied. Before belittling and insulting your readers, note that anger is typically directed at the topic – not the author or publication. Inciting anger in readers typically requires some tolerance for dealing with controversial topics. The comment study also found that controversial blog posts receive twice as many comments on average. Still, many brands will want to avoid hot topics that could alienate customers and partners.

For most, awe will be the safest and most reliable path towards viral content. Awe is more than surprise – it’s the reason we can’t stop watching movies with big explosions and larger-than-life heroes. Creative inventions, completed labor-intensive projects, stunning design, and novel are all ways to fill viewers and readers with awe.

Prove you care

Emotion-filled posts tend to be shared more, according to the survey. Creating content with an emotional tone can be harder than it sounds, especially in professional writing. This has always been a weakness of mine – I don’t write my emotions, even on topics I am freakishly passionate about. Overly-professional and mechanical corporate writing does not get shared.

There are piles and piles of good, insightful, thoughtful content that no one ever cared about – much of it was just too damn bland. If you need inspiration, look to Ian Lurie for examples of writing that no one would consider bland. (That’s a compliment, I swear.)

Practically useful, surprising, and interesting

Content that is surprising, interesting, and practically useful receives more shares than the obvious, boring, and useless content. These might be the most intuitive of the findings, but it’s helpful to keep in mind the degree to which each variable impacts sharing.

Known authors

Being known by the audience had a large impact on whether a news article was shared. In fact, the fame of the author was just slightly more important that content that was surprising. Luke Clum recently said it best on the Distilled blog:

“…a common misconception has developed amongst SEO’s – mainly that good content speaks entirely for itself. While content is innately influential, it usually only carries the authority of its creator or publisher.” (source)

SEOs are experts in detecting credible content online, yet we sometimes forget that every piece of content is at least partly considered based on its author’s reputation – or lack thereof – and credibility. If a piece of content is intended to go viral, an industry authority (aspiring or current) will usually be better off taking charge of it. Otherwise, content may need to make a special effort to inspire trust (e.g. through introduction and stories).

Female authors

The NYT study also suggests that female authors had a greater chance of going viral, but the underlying reasons are unclear. Do women choose more viral topics than men? Is the Times better at hiring female journalists? We may never know.

The easy answer: humor

Most obviously, content that is truly and broadly viral is almost always funny. One study interestingly titled “From subservient chickens to brawny men” found that despite 62% of ads being aired by Fortune 500 companies, 60% of viral ads were being generated by the smaller companies. The discussion continues:

“Humor was employed at near unanimous levels for all viral advertisements. Consequently, this study identified humor as the universal appeal for making content viral.”

Humor isn't always the answer, but it's essentially a pre-requisite for a viral ad. Small companies win more than their share of attention because they're willing to be a little more interesting and less sterile. Take Mike Pantoliano’s advice: shut up and be funny.

Limitations

As I’ve said, these studies looked at correlation (which is not necessarily causation). Further, quantifying human response is enormously difficult, and not everyone is the same. I am by no means suggesting that the viral checklist is applicable to every single person on the planet. Still, I’m pretty comfortable with the research behind the checklist, and it passes the common-sense test.

A viral checklist

Two months from now it’s going to be easy to sit down and create content in the same habits we always have. Not all content needs to be viral, but when that’s the goal, make sure that you accomplish all of the following.

Did you sufficiently cover the topic? Is it long enough? (24)

Does the content inspire a high-energy emotion like awe (16), anger(18), or anxiety (18)?

Did your tone convey emotion? (12)

Is it practically useful? (16)

Is it interesting? (14)

Is it surprising? (8)

Does the author have fame/credibility? (8)

If it’s supposed to be funny, is it actually funny? Are you sure your friends aren’t just being nice? (∞)

You can’t always have all of these factors, so I've added a maximum score in parenthesis to help prioritize those factors that research has shown to be most important to sharing. If you rate your content at or near 100, it's likely that it has a far greater chance of going viral.

About Carson-Ward —

Carson Ward has worked as a marketing manager at Clearlink and as a consultant with Distilled. In 2017 he founded a small company specializing in affiliate marketing.

Sorry Andy, that's my fault. The X (bottom) axis was the number of the article. The Y axis was the number of words. The list was sorted by number of social shares.I received many similar comments on the original post. I'll be sure to label them better in the future.

@dohertyjf, sorry, but I still don't understand the graph, even with the explanation.

"Number of the article?" Does that mean "arbitrarily assigned number" to identify them? And you say, "sorted by number of social shares," does this mean that they were arbitrarily assigned numbers after sorting them? Also, what is the direction of sort -- ascending or descending? Wouldn't it have been better to make the y-axis the independent variable (which is the norm), say, "number of social shares," for instance?

And the dependent variable (x-axis) could be the word count. But somehow I find the graph a little unbelievable. Most articles are over 5000 words? And 35,000 words is a book!

I like groovy statistics as much as anyone, but this graph is confusing, potentially misleading, and possibly erroneous. I would certainly love to see a corrected graph or an explanation about the somewhat unbelievable figures used.

Hahaha, this is really nice work, Carson. I especially like your point around inspiring powerful sentiments that provoke not just a reaction, but a response. And of course I love what you say about humor being a pre-requisite, especially for smaller companies who may not have the budget and resources of mega-corps.

At REI, we had hit-and-miss results with our use of humor and how we combined it with other elements of our core audience's interests and pop culture. For example, I (personally) found this infographic of ours to be hilarious, but it performed relatively poorly. Whereas this one did much, much better.

Even so, what ended up working best for us was to provide useful, actionable, approachable information -- whether or not it was funny -- in an engaging manner. Your review question about practicality and usefulness speaks to this idea and it's what drove the success of most of our content marketing last year. That authenticity is core to our brand and we discovered that it's also core to our customers as well!

Thanks, Jon. The researchers who looked in to ads concluded that humor is a pre-requisite to a viral ad, and I certainly can't think of a single exception. I didn't want to dwell on that, though, partly because it's so obvious, and partly because it really only applies to ads. Certainly viral content may include humor, but as you say, it can be hit-and-miss.

Enjoyed reading this post. Nice job drawing in the data to show why different articles go viral rather than just using many common assumptions. As I was reading this a lot of things seemed to click and register with me(Which probably should happen more than it usually does). Anyway, as I was reading about the different emotional elements that makes content go viral I immediately began to think about this past election. The awe, anger or anxiety does seem to really make individuals continue to forward emails or post items on Facebook for their friends to read when they normally would just read an item and move on. It seems a lot of people get pretty fired up over politics today and I never received more forwarded emails from friends in my life than this fall regarding some crazy email about the election. This is a great post because when reading it, I think everyone can relate to these emotions and think of a time when they forwarded on some piece of content due to their feelings of awe, angry or anxiety. Well done.

Fascinating analysis and really appreciated, Carson. I've never believed that the short attention span of general audience
topics requires short content. It's a joy to have some proof.

Many clients request 500 word-count articles yet topics they've identified most often require longer articles - sometimes 1000s longer. Our writing team is constantly battling the client's perception that brevity equals share-ability. The idea of breaking long articles into parts has been explored with some success but I wonder if leaving long articles in tact would be more beneficial.

Even in my own sharing, what I consider high perceived value content - and therefore sharable - is almost always longer. Sharing obviously impacts the reputation of the sharer as well as the author and I'm certainly going to research something before sharing if the item doesn't contain enough detail. If that detail is included to begin with, the item is much more likely to be shared.

Thanks! It's easy to get attached to the idea of short posts when you're looking at blog comments as a signal. Blogs that are just getting started often look at blog comments, and we've learned that longer posts get fewer comments but more shares. Hopefully the backing of research can help us make our case while setting expectations for fewer comments.

Carson, love this post! Of course, we want all the content we produce to go viral. It literally hurts when you pour 20-40+ hours and/or $100s of dollars into a project to see it fall flat. I think if you hit success 60-70% of the time, you're doing pretty good, but you can always aim for more.

It saddens me that 'anger' beats 'awe' as the top emotion. As someone who hides emotion in thier pocket, I tend to produce 'utility' type link bait, which I think has a longer shelf life - meaning it's more likely to earn links even 1-2 years down the road.

Fantastic post. Thank you for sharing these insights and I think that the final checklist is an excellent reference when the goal is viral content. The only factor I see as being absent is the "uniqueness" of the content, and as explained by Seth Godin below: "the importance of going first":

Being unique certainly matters, but uniqueness isn't a viral virtue on its own. My sense is that uniqueness only matters insofar as it's surprising. People obviously won't be surprised if they've seen/read/heard/understood it already.

Viral content does need some planning on various aspects as Carson has clearly mentioned it. Authority or credibility of an author, authority that the site has, quality of the content, mentions or references to the content by authoritative sites or authors, up votes for the content by people on community forums etc. are all directly proportional to the no. of shares and blog comments (user engagement) on the content. And yes! Those are the signs of the content gone viral.

Thanks for the post Carson. I had read the original article when it was printed. I have found over time the most practical checklist point to be "create emotionality". I guess everyone coming to this blog recognizes that nothing is guaranteed to get you to the holy grail of "viral". To complicate matters, most of us work in teams and get drafts at a fairly advanced stage. At that stage, "emotionalism" is a great point to keep in the back of your head (like spell-check and readability). For e.g. I would change the title of this post from "Why Content Goes Viral: the Theory and Proof" to something more emotional, e.g. "Urging to get viral? The Theory and Proof"

I had the hardest time titling this post - something closer to yours is probably better. :) Other potential titles included, "The Science of Viral Content," and "Carson cites more research on a topic people think is weird." Gladly, I made myself a checklist that I find useful as I finished the post, so I'll follow my own advice better next time.

The issue I take with Berger & Milkman's article is in how they choose to define "viral." By their definition, anything on the NYT "Most emailed list" qualified, which includes 20% of all articles published. That's not exactly an elite group--certainly not what people think of when they hear the word "viral." (What if you were to say that 20% of all YouTube videos are viral videos, for example?) Ultimately, it's great that they brought this research out--it's published in the best marketing journal, so the statistics are solid and the topic is interesting. But I wonder whether the article does a disservice to the progress of research in the area because it assumes to be authoritative on the topic of "virality," when it hasn't even defined "viral" and the dataset it uses has the definitional flaw I mentioned earlier.

Do you think there's a difference between what they found in the original article and what someone would find if they decided to take only the top 1% of shared articles?

I'm glad you brought it up, Scott. I worried about the same thing, but they're not just checking posts off as viral or not. They check their data by analyzing how long the posts were on the most-shared list, and which top positions they achieved. You can read more about the robustness of the data in their appendix.

I don't think we'd be looking at different factors if only the top 1% were studied, but the weight of each factor would likely change a bit.

Thanks for this interesting post. I think we need to remember that we are talking mostly about articles from the NYT and how often people share them via email. If your audience is different or you want them to share on FB or Twitter, you might need a different set of criteria. I noticed no mention at all about the importance of high quality photos or graphics which seem critical in social media, but maybe not as important for the NYT.

Great question. There's another whole post to be written about this, actually. There's a lot of research showing that images have more of an emotional impact on us. This study, for example, found that images with captions elicited far stronger emotions and more interest than just the text alone. Following the logic in the other studies, and knowing that interest and emotion are key variables, I think it's safe to say that using images wisely can make something more viral. Whether video works better than text or image almost certainly depends on the quality of photography, sound quality, and how much visualization and/or body language add.

While the article is interesting, what it suggests doesn't add up to much really.Article length is a great example: The professors did a really good job here of documenting the numbers, but they sort of failed to consider that the medium they are looking at is perhaps biased in many ways. The layout and the structure of the NYT, as well as the types of articles likely to get longer discussion, tend to lean things toward the longer articles. however, even their data shows that there is very much a "big middle", and that the advantage for a truly long article is only in the extreme.They actually did a very good job, but because of the specialized nature of the newspaper, as well as it's methods for promotion, it's hard to say how this might apply in the real world. A shorter but complete article on a subject might do better than a longer, puffed up piece, as an example. It would depend as much on what your individual readers are looking for, as much as it's actual length.As a result, I think maybe a "viral checklist" is perhaps a bit far to go. Trying to create a list of hard and fast rules to get something to be viral seems somewhat less than normal :)

Thanks for the comment, Alex. I would have liked to incorporate other research on the topic, but it's often poorly-executed, conflicting, and full of self-selecting/self-reporting answers. There are a ton of "social media studies" that turn out to just be self-reported surveys about what people want to share and why. They're interesting, but so un-scientific that they simply can't be relied upon.

Thee degree to which the above factors apply to a site definitely varies. For blogs and news sites, I'd expect that applicability to be relatively high. Regardless, my feeling is that starting with the best data we have is better than running off completely subjective (and again, conflicting) opinion.

Great article and thank you Carson for linking to the official paper. I have two options now - take for granted the fact that female writers go viral more and do nothing or follow your checklist... hmmm, I choose option 2!

Thanks for your post. Our team is working hard to create something that goes "viral". Our goal is to create a community and that starts with getting regular readers. I appreciate the information about including longer posts as well as conveying emotion. I don't know how we would manage the latter but we can sure try to brainstorm some ideas. We will have to try and test those ideas.

We did follow the advice of another blogger, Aleyda Solis, in her post about "superhero slides". Our team put in over 36 hours to complete this project and it is truly the biggest project we have ever done. We managed to include a few of your recommendations; I am female ;), we used humor, the information is useful and hopefully it conveys that we care. Carson, we would appreciate any feedback if you have a minute. http://nomorecreditcards.com/how-to-pay-off-credit-card-debt-fast/

I'd say this is a good post because I like to understand the psychology behind what drives the way we think when it comes to social media and the digital age. So many consumers, even educated consumers, are oblivious to the stimuli that drive them to action. What I can take away from this article are that the two biggest drivers to virality are to 1) be funny and 2) provoke anger or passion in the reader. Both things are not typically seen on the agenda of a major brand - if anything the opposite, at least with the anger bit. I think this article could be made more useful by providing examples of businesses that have succeeded in this, and also to touch on if going viral once makes you more likely to go viral again - or if you only have one shot.

Very good research Carson. Will be very useful. So, the take away here is, write long angry articles in a funny way. hahaha just kidding. Personally, I don't like long blog posts, unless it is written in an interesting story mode, so I usually don't write long ones unless the subject requires it. Good article, thanks!

People share stuff to show off, too - implying that they know about something, when sometimes they haven't even read it. I know because I have done this myself :-D. A long post would make you look better to your boss / colleagues than a short post...

I'd love to know if people are more likely to share with colleagues (people in sight during screen time) or friends, despite the nature of the content.

And of course the (UK) Daily Mail Online's success is in part down to provoking anger - and just look at their comment threads.

Carson,But i think pinching title matters also. Infact i enjoyed your post and got to know the facts behind the viral scenario of content. But as i have seen many times, it goes viral just because of their unique and pinching titles.

Hi Nazre,I started by talking about the "what" - I haven't even started talking about the "how." That's going to be part 2! You're right that headlines matter, but only insofar as it accomplishes one of the goals above. In other words, it's part of the checklist.

Is the headline interesting? Surprising? Does it tell people about the emotional subject matter that they're going to care about? Does it hint at something practically useful? The same factors apply to images, content, etc. More coming soon :)

What I got from Nazre that you can actually use a pinching headline in your titles, for instance: "Yourwebsite.com beating yatra.com with its features." people actually study it and publish stuff when they observe there is actually something in the market that is competing with a big brand. By this way people talk about your services/product. And they share this with his community also.

Carson, thanks for an interesting blog. Your point about length is analogous to the world of direct marketing, where long sales letters outperform short ones. In a longer letter you can go to town on the benefits to the reader. The other point is that writers with a good viral-load are not only credible because they know their stuff, but because they have the confidence to let their own voice come through. They write with personality, and in business writing that's rare.

Interesting; I wouldn't have guessed that long sales letters win. I think writing with personality and writing with emotion are often correlated. It's crazy that so many people write in business-ese when no one in their right mind really wants to read something written without personality or emotion.

Great post with lots of valuable info! I have one refinement to offer. I think these factors are all most relevant with specific audiences, such as an email list.

I'd also say that if you rate your content at or near 100, it's likely that it has a far greater chance of being valuable and good, but not necessarily a far greater chance of being viral. I think for content to go viral on a large scale it needs to be supported by a thoughtful marketing plan. And being tweeted by a famous person is a good item to have on that marketing plan if you can: http://youtu.be/BpxVIwCbBK0 (Ted Talk by YouTube's Kevin Allocca: Why videos go viral )

All solid points - thanks for adding. I hope I didn't give the impression that 100/100 means it will go viral. Actually reaching out and spreading the word in the right channels and to the right people is hugely important. My hope was to just focus on the content for now, as it's a pre-requisite.

yes agree, did the trial....funny that bad news makes the best news﻿. My biggest hits on Google + were around the Happy Diwali! +Diwali. Who would have thought....140+ and 50 shares...It was just about the celebration of the festival of
lights in India. it is simply beautiful if you look at some of the
images. Barack recommends it! https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/102840905702490159848/102840905702490159848/posts

That first graph makes so much sense. It's kind of funny, we're always complaining around the office about people who send long emails. No one ever reads them because of how much there is the tackle. Same goes for content on the web! It must be broken down!

I like the checklist approach, but I
feel the fame of the author is slightly under valued here. I think all
the other pieces fall into place easier and faster if the author does have the added advantage of fame or a large starting base of followers, readers, etc...

I also feel that being first with unique content (as stated in other comments) is definitely a bonus, but there can be something said for content that reviews an old topic with a fresh angle, or simply "doing it better" (by being more clear, concise, using infographics or great visuals, etc...) can have it's benefits.

I'm
highly intrigued by the section on female authors having a greater
chance for going viral. That topic is worth checking into! Great article, thanks!

It's entirely possible that the impact of fame varies quite a lot by niche. When you're looking at the Times, you're talking about national celebrities and authors talking about things like politics and culture. It's plausible that in online marketing and social media, author credibility has more of an impact.

I'd like to revisit Tammy's comment here. At a recent trade show, Jon Morrow talked about getting your post "on the big rocket," like the space shuttle is on a big rocket. The NYT is one of the biggest rockets there is. Since we're not writers for the NYT, I think fame, either of the writer or the publication, is more important for the average SEO or online marketer. Even if you've got 100 points in all the other categories, you have to have a certain critical mass to truly spread the piece.

"longer articles tend to be shared far more often", agree, because these long blog posts or presidential speeches get people bored quickly and they prefer to say, I'll share it (which is the same that I'll save it) in my Twitter or Facebook account to read it later, thing that probably they won't never do. If I don't share a short article is because I ended to read it totally, when I share something, most of the times is because I prefer to save the link and read it later, but 50% of the times I forget these long and boring articles. Nothing like going straight to the point.

Great post Carson. I do find that adding a personal touch to an article makes it a lot more "shareable" than plain boring psots, as interesting as the boring post can be.

Where did you get the NYT data from?

I find there is a fine line between covering a topic enough and just blabbing to add content. It also depends on the topic but if you can explain everything clearly in 300 words, you don't need 500 words to make the post "worthy".Interesting post though and I will share it with the bloggers at my company.

Thanks, I'm glad you found it useful. You can see the full study here. I'm with you in the idea that there's no "ideal" word count. I know that somewhere there's a spammy blog upping their required word count to 1000 or more. The answer to bad content, of course, is not more bad content.

"Overly-professional and mechanical corporate writing does not get shared."

Depending on your niche, it can be really hard to inject personality and emotion into your writing, especially if you are writing about something technical. If you're trying to explain a complex law of physics you have to explain a complex law of physics and make sure you do it right. I think a lot of people are worried that if they get to lax in their writing that people won't take them seriously.

You're completely right that some topics are harder than others to insert emotion into than others. Not all content is supposed to go viral, and that's ok. Sometimes you just need to explain a complex subject to a technical crowd, or a piece that answers a question for your customers.

If a piece is supposed to go viral, though, I don't see scholarly topics as an exception. I've seen some law pieces that went viral, for example on Groklaw - the Samsung commentary is a great example. Many of these posts are about topics and companies that techies are emotional about, and they're written with emotion in the tone.

Fame/credibility can easily surpass all other factors in your viral checklist. For example any post on the home page of SEOmoz no matter how good or bad is going to get at least 200-300 tweets simply because of the high perceived value associated with the SEOmoz brand. Similarly an article on the home page of hacker news/Reddit is more likely to get viral because of the high perceived value of all the articles which end up on the home page. Celebrities like justin bieber can easily make any content go viral.

Very interesting post, thank you. I will definitely consider all the points of the checklist before writing an article or post. Do sufficiency of covered topic and length always the most important point? (I thought so as you five 24 to this point)

What surprised me were not the factors themselves, but their relative weight. Contrary to what I would have guessed, thoroughly covering the topic at length does seem to be hugely important. Length, of course, won't cut it - you can bet that the journalists and editors at the Times aren't writing just to inflate their word count.

Great post! I've always wondered how I can make my content go viral, and now I can actually do the math and try to reach a score of around 100 before publishing! Unless of course, I can get witty enough like you to add a humourous touch to it, thus winning me infinite points, like you say! :DI've found this "long, in-depth" point through guest posts pitching, if I'm sending them an in-depth analysis for an article, they will gladly accept. Even for me personally, I like reading long, researched articles (like this one). Thanks for all these important viral tips for content!

Great data. I really enjoy reading longer articles, since they are more in-depth, share personal experiences/opinions and feel more insightful. If an article does not share anything new or interesting I will not retweet it. You can tell when people don't even read articles and just go 'RT crazy' because when I read RTed articles they sometimes stink... or the RTers won't engage in the conversation. These types of RTs fill up feeds with useless information that is not detailed, informative, useful or funny. I have noticed that my most shared posts are long, tell a unique story or are funny... or all of the above. My most RTed tweet was about a gross traditional meal... about 100hits. Others are informative sharing a story or point of view. Maybe I need to start writing angry posts and see my readership skyrocket. ;) Thanks for this article!

Nice post Carson. Creating a post that goes viral requires all the things you stated mixed with a good dose of creativity, which is generally a perquisite for humor. Viral content creation is more of an art than a science, but I like the fact that you have data to back up your conclusions/checklist with weights, even if it may be correlation instead of causation. Thanks for sharing.

There are many posts yet to be written on the creative/artistic developments. Now that we know what we need to accomplish, the "how" is a much bigger question with an unlimited number of answers. For me, the goals and constraints were a necessary starting place. I actually wrote a similar post about creativity a long time ago. :)

I think that short posts gets more comments because spammers that are looking for backlinks don't want to read long post just to make sure their comment will be on-topic and not removed.In other hand, people that are looking for answers like to read long posts because they want to learn as much new things as possible. If they find useful information in your post, they will link to it and share on social networks.

I enjoyed this breakdown of viral content. The viral content checklist exceptionally useful. Personally, I find inspiring and emotional content often goes viral. To be exact, content that makes us feel something. Most of us ordinary people have very scheduled normal lives. When we come across content that makes us laugh, cry, and feel, we feel obligated to share it to our friends. The Kony 2012 movement is one excellent example of viral content. We felt inspired to try to make a difference. The call to action was simple. Share the video and let your friends and family know about Kony's heinous crimes. Even a simple funny video inspires laughter in individuals. We want to make our friends and family laugh and smile so we share the video to them.

This is good data… although I don’t think any of the trick
mentioned above are 100% going to work as there is no perfect recipe for a
content to go viral.

I really like the idea of checklist… it is good to cover as
much points as possible… plus I really want to add one point on long posts… and
this is to have awesomely smart content especially of the first few paragraphs
because if the first impression is going to go bore people might not continue
reading… and this is why if you read long posts that go viral mostly first few
lines always catch users attention…

A great research you did here and I really like the way you have written this awesome post. Your theory and the proof is great and too realistic that is helping us to get the value of the best quality content and really like your idea that if our audience know who is writing the post it impact great and you can easily get the bets audience.

Either the author of this article or this guy has committed plagiary. http://socialmediatoday.com/daniel-zeevi/1252631/how-write-articles-go-viral-social-media-10-tips?utm_source=hootsuite&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=hootsuite_tweets

Hey Carson, First of i will appreciate such great writeup. I and all digital media specialists must agree with all the Viral Checklists you mentions in the end of post. Out of all, emotion and personalization are two most important fact which makes any stuff viral.

I'm very late to the party Carson et al but I wanted to chime in and confirm that authority is a big deal. I recently wrote a blog on this topic and it hasn't taken off so far. [www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-do-you-get-your-marketing-content-go-viral-alex-abaz] And yet I made similar points based on my research and observations. I wish I had dug into the topic and quoted studies but then I may not have written the blog. You see I like originality even if data does solidify a stance.). (By the way, I arrived at you blog via http://mashable.com/2015/05/28/humor-social-media/. I know I've other blogs you've written but I had not come accross this one and I liked it very much while agreeing with many comments.)

Thanks, Alex. I get what you mean - it's hard to know how much to cite and how much to consider yourself. I actually had a bunch of studies I was going to link to, but in the end I had to narrow the focus before it turned into a white paper. :) Thanks for pointing out the Mashable article - I hadn't seen that one.

Brilliant Post! It's always beneficial to gain knowledge about writing and in general content creation due to it being quite hard to create content in the first place and any tips are always beneficial, especially when it comes to marketing said content!

Nice: "Inspire awe, anger or anxiety." Emotion definitely drives attention, whether it's good or bad emotion. My most popular blog post last year questioned some standard practices used by database admins and recommended a completely different paradigm. Of course, I shared it through a database news source and it infuriated a number of DBA's who disagreed with me. But it sparked a lot of comments, sharing and other blogs responding to my post. Eventually I had to disable comments because I couldn't keep up with them. If you can touch on people's emotions you'll get a lot of participation.

Well in England, since the Innocent Smoothie range launched about a decade ago, most firms are trying the old "humour" approach. Everyone's at it with varying degrees of success; some adverts are just gross, like the one with the anti-septic hand wipe which sees a woman picking up dog excrement. I'd say, possibly, the new advertising approach should be about being vile towards your customers; verbal abuse and general haranguing to be meted out on television adverts and the like. Terrify your market into purchasing your product! Then reward them with strawberries.

Great piece that I shared with our followers in The Netherlands. It shows exactly how a good post should be written.To have an interesting topic, depth and analysing about this topic plus a "sauce" of humor is the key indeed.thx. Carson

Great post. As a blogger and an Seo Specialist, I am always trying to create content that is fresh, hip, and funny. I am always searching for that golden topic that will catapult itself into the internet share-o-sphere and get thousands and hundreds of shares and tweets. I actually printed out the checklist, and will use it as a guide for every post I come up with from now on!

Interesting approach, however I think one source is not enough to make any conclusion.

2 years ago I've approached the same topic regardless the format. You can see it here after slide 38 http://www.slideshare.net/juanmarketing/new-trends-marketing-guerrilla-viral-marketing-social-media-marketing-universidad-europea-madrid

Happy to contribute with my thoughts to the reach this mysterious formula :-)

Great blog thanks - i learnt alot and it challenged some preconceptions i had built up in the short time i have been trying to do/learn SEO. I thought short posts/blogs etc were the key - ie not boring the pants off the viewer. I was glad to see that our use of humour to gain likes/follows and comments was something we are doing right to shared - we are also tying blogs/posts and image posts via our social sites to the news and that is also increasing our talked about stats and subscirbers etc.

But all this is so new i think i am a long way off writing great shareable contact - but its the goal ;-) Thanks for the guidance...and yes the graph confused me too lol.

Great post! I love the checklist and will have to utilize that in my next post(s). Thanks for the info.This article, the graphics used in particular, inspired my inner proof-reader..what is "liklihood"? lol

I do agree when you say that not all great content goes viral but the one that does is great. I would say that it is "usually" great, instead of great every single time. We all have been exposed to some type of useless content that everybody is talking about. I believe that viral content is the one that has been marketed in the most efficient way.

yes! I like the checklist approach, but I
feel the fame of the author is slightly under valued here. I think all
the other pieces fall into place easier and faster if the author does
have the added advantage of fame or a large starting base of followers,
readers, etc...

I also feel that being first with unique content
(as stated in other comments) is definitely a bonus, but there can be
something said for content that reviews an old topic with a fresh angle,
or simply "doing it better" (by being more clear, concise, using info graphics or great visuals, etc...) can have it's benefits.